Re: ANN: Boulder Dash in OCaml

Yeah, well, the core physics of Boulder Dash is akin to a cellular automaton whose state is advanced in ticks. So its state naturally is a 2D array with a constant change rate, and there isn’t too much to gain by a more functional representation, especially since OCaml doesn’t offer functional array types.

The uglier part in terms of being very imperative is the UI code, but without a more functional graphics library that’s probably a lost cause.

Performance would be the least of the issues, given that 1 MHz computers from the 80s were able to handle this game. :)


> On 27. Nov 2024, at 07:54, Yotam Barnoy <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Very nice! Since you're already toying with the code, you might want to try and test the impact of moving towards a more functional, immutable data structure approach. I've found that you can separate out those parts of the game state that change more rapidly and those that don't, and the slow-changing parts can easily tolerate functional paradigms, with the advantage being greater safety and reduced state complexity.
> 
> On Tue, Nov 26, 2024 at 7:39 PM Andreas Rossberg <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> Couldn’t let it rest, so I’m (already) announcing version 2 of it — now a much improved, practically feature-complete reimplementation of both Boulder Dash 1 & 2.
>> 
>> Version 2 was an excuse for me to mess around with the OCaml bindings to popular graphics engines, and as a result, it now comes with 3 backends to choose from:
>> 
>> 1. the homely bare OCaml Graphics library (https://github.com/ocaml/graphics),
>> 2. the TSDL binding to the SDL2 API (https://github.com/dbuenzli/tsdl),
>> 3. the binding to the Raylib engine (https://github.com/tjammer/raylib-ocaml).
>> 
>> The list is in order of increasingly better user experience, for the price of a potentially harder build experience. In theory, all versions should run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, though I was too lazy to test all combinations, and I (or my opam) had trouble installing some of the dependencies on some of the systems.
>> 
>> Features:
>> 
>> * Faithful original physics, graphics, animations, sound, and music
>> * Authentic scrolling mechanics combined with dynamic resizing
>> * All 40 levels and 5 difficulties of Boulder Dash 1 & 2
>> * Pause-and-go mode for relaxed playing
>> 
>> Relative to the previous release, version 2 adds the following niceties:
>> 
>> * Support for SDL and Raylib engines, which allow all of the following
>> * Original sound effects and music
>> * Original level color schemes
>> * Full screen mode
>> * Faster graphics
>> * Dynamic graphics scaling adjustment
>> * Gamepad/joystick support as well as more precise keyboard controls
>> * Boulder Dash 2 levels and decoder
>> 
>> Almost looks like a real game now. One from the 80s anyways. :)
>> 
>> Enjoy,
>> /Andreas
>> 
>> 
>> > On 12. Nov 2024, at 16:55, Andreas Rossberg <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > Boulder Dash(*) was my favourite computer game in the 8-bit era, first released on the Atari 400/800 in 1984. Though I never owned an 8-bit machine myself, I had friends that I annoyed enough to let me play it on theirs.
>> > 
>> > As a homage to its 40th anniversary, I put together a fairly faithful clone of the original game, implemented in just a few 100 lines of bare OCaml, with nothing but the homely Graphics library. It should run on Windows, Mac, and Linux, though I was too lazy to test the latter.
>> > 
>> > Features:
>> > 
>> >    • Faithful original physics, graphics, and animations
>> >    • Authentic scrolling mechanics combined with dynamic window resizing
>> >    • All 20 levels, including intermissions, and 5 difficulties
>> >    • Pause-and-go mode for relaxed playing
>> > 
>> > It is open-source here:
>> > 
>> >    https://github.com/rossberg/boulder-dash
>> > 
>> > Enjoy!
>> > 
>> > /Andreas
>> > 
>> > (*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder_Dash_(video_game) 
>> >    "Boulder Dash" is a trademark of BBG Entertainment
>> > 
>>